Seeking to bridge the divide between the popular cultural memory of the western front and the scholarship of professional historians, Landscapes of the Western Front fits well into the growing discourse surrounding the commemoration of the First World War. Ross Wilson reconsiders the war on the western front as it was experienced by British soldiers, making the material environment the focus of his investigation. In so doing, Wilson builds upon the multidisciplinary agenda of previous scholars, with particular emphasis on the concept of “war cultures”—as experienced by different groups of the population. Grounding his analysis in the anthropological study of human interaction with material objects, Wilson provides an ethnohistory of the British soldiers' experience. His purpose is to describe how the average Tommy constructed a sense of place (with meaning and values) in the landscape and trenches of the western front. His goal is to provide a type of middle ground within the contested memory of the western front in Britain. While the book is brief and necessarily limited in scope, Wilson provides readers with an intriguing lens of analysis for reinterpreting the soldiers' experience.

The book is divided into seven chapters, including an introduction and a conclusion. Wilson's historiography sets the tone for the book, highlighting the divide between military historians' depictions of the war and its representations in popular culture, which portrays the western front as a “disastrous, pointless misuse of life” and tends to see soldiers as victims (12). It is in this context that the author makes the case for an ethnographic analysis of soldiers at the front, particularly noting the importance of archaeological excavations in Belgium and France. Combining an analysis of traditional archival sources with archaeological data produces an understanding of how soldiers constructed a sense of place and identity in the war landscape. Wilson goes on to provide a rather general history of the British army on the western front. He does not, however, begin his analysis in earnest until chapter 4. Sadly, there are only three chapters devoted to the crux of his argument, examining the soldiers' experience behind the lines, their life in the trenches, and the objects of war to which they imparted meaning.

Wilson makes a convincing case that the soldiers' experience behind the lines and their time in the trenches were equally important in constructing a sense of place and belonging in the war landscape. Encounters with refugees and a destroyed landscape evoked emotions of disgust and fear. At the same time, interaction with foreigners (both civilians and soldiers) could lead to prejudice, suspicion, and frustration. Enlisted men's reaction fluctuated between empathy for displaced victims and demands of gratitude from civilians. On a more prosaic level, soldiers constructed a familiar sense of place when they “tommified” the landscape by anglicizing the names of French and Belgium towns. This was part of the broader process in which soldiers both created the way they saw the world and found themselves fundamentally shaped by the material and personal circumstances around them.

Wilson makes the point that the process in which the soldiers were “enveloped” by material, physical, and cultural aspects of the war continued in the trenches. Because the battlefield was the war the soldiers knew, it in turn shaped those who operated within it. While this might appear self-evident, it is perhaps the strongest point of Wilson's argument. By applying an ethnographic analysis to the trench experience, he is able to convincingly describe the front lines as a “complex and multiform space” where soldiers created a social world that had intense meaning for those who were part of it (124). Soldiers formed the war landscape they inhabited. At the same time, these material surroundings actively shaped their identity. As part of this process, soldiers assigned meaning to trenches, redoubts, no-man's land, and the desolated battlefield. In constructing this sense of place, soldiers humanized the hostile landscape they had helped to construct. Moreover, the place shaped their experience and identity: they acted violently in a landscape that was shaped by violence; they experienced terror; they felt the loss of comrades and terror. Wilson effectively demonstrates that soldiers were not simply stoic victims of an incompetent General Staff; they actively defined the meaning of their place in the context of the western front.

In addition to the wartime landscape, the soldiers' identities were also formed by their relationship with objects they utilized at the front. Asserting that the relationship between individuals and objects is so strong that one is enveloped within the other, Wilson contends that possession of military equipment both established and reinforced that status of men being soldiers. The equipment helped create the sense of identity and perception of place at the front (176). This was particularly the case with the Lee Enfield Rifle, and to a lesser extent with mill-bombs, machine guns, trench clubs, and other equipment. While his analysis of the relationship between possessor and object is convincing, Wilson needs to better connect this aspect of the soldiers' identity with the construction of place behind the front lines.

Landscapes of the Western Front provides the reader with a compelling reevaluation of traditional sources by employing an ethnographic approach. Leaning heavily on the private papers of British combatants, Wilson successfully describes how soldiers shaped a sense of place through their interaction with, and construction of, the landscape around them. In this sense, he provides the reader with a broad understanding of how they might have understood their own war culture. While Wilson has provided a potential bridge between the myopic cultural memory of the western front and the work of professional historians, more scholarship in this vein is required to strengthen that span. One must also remember that these polarized understanding are legitimate fields of inquiry in their own right.